Joan,
Can you have your vet write you a prescription for selegiline? It's bound to be cheaper than the cost of Anipryl. If it's helping a lot, I wouldn't rock the boat on that boy. BTW, I had to sit up with Miss Eve (mother of Luke and one of Rip's former wives) last night, she was having a Miss Daisy moment, all wobbly and confused. This morning she rolled in the grass, ate horse feed off the floor of the barn and was 100% herself again, whew!
Give yourself and the Man a hug for me...

Originally posted by Tassie:
I believe that Purina ProPlan is what Guide Dogs use for all their pups and dogs (here in Oz). If that's right, they must be fairly satisfied with it
**********
I'm sure it's donated by Purina. I have no doubt. Fabulous PR opportunity, plus it's a charity write-off. Plus, Purina's support of GD also gets Purina into the private household--a win-win proposition for Purina all the way around.

For GD or any other non-profit, "free" is invaluable. I am certain it would take a LOT of bad press for GD to turn down free dogfood.

One can feed whatever one wants to feed, for whatever reasons, for however long one wants. What's important to remember though is that Purina andr Waltham and IAMs will NEVER knowingly themselves in a bad light. Dog food companies make huge profits on their products--the "pet" owning community has very deep pockets when it comes to its animals. Like any successful company, Purina or whoever has well-paid staff that makes darn sure the publicity Purina gets is good publicity; these people are brilliant in creating new markets and exploiting old ones.

Just as you shouldn't base raw diet decisions on faddy claims, you also shouldn't base commercial dog food decisions on endorsements. Do the research in either case.
Chris O

Originally posted by Debbie Crowder-BaaramuLuke:Can you have your vet write you a prescription for selegiline? It's bound to be cheaper than the cost of Anipryl. If it's helping a lot, I wouldn't rock the boat on that boy. BTW, I had to sit up with Miss Eve (mother of Luke and one of Rip's former wives) last night, she was having a Miss Daisy moment, all wobbly and confused. This morning she rolled in the grass, ate horse feed off the floor of the barn and was 100% herself again, whew! Give yourself and the Man a hug for me...

Hi, Debbie! My vet insists that there is no generic for Anipryl. :mad: (This is a new vet for me, and I'm not entirely satisfied!) I'll talk to her about it again. I agree with you about rocking the boat. Before Anipryl, he was forgetting to go outside for bathroom trips. After a week of so of Anipryl, no more accidents! That's just one example.

I remember Eve! One of Rip's MANY former wives. I know spending time with her is special for you. Sorry she is having those senior moments, but it sounds like she's having good days, too. Rip's biggest problem right now is the back third of his body. He falls a lot and has trouble getting up. He occasionally has a day when it doesn't bother him, and he is obviously still enjoying life.

I had him at Robin's place last Sunday, and he was roaming around, sniffing and grazing, totally oblivious to the fact that I was working sheep. He even stood beside me while I was working Dhu. He did take the walk-up command that I gave Dhu. He would like being called The Man. :cool:

The dog food question always puzzles me...I know if I fed the food that was absolutely THE very best for my dogs, they'd live long, healthy lives, free of any abnormalities that I could attribute to their diet. IF they lived out in the wild again, they'd probably be hunter/scavengers, eating wild stuff in it's entirety, and be fine, same as the coyotes/raccoons/feral cats are out our way(just animals I've seen) or not, because I'm not so sure those animals wouldn't look/feel better on commercial diets and less stressful lives having to find their own food. I have had access to premium diets that I got wholesale or free, just for being an employee of a particular vendor, and I have witnessed lots of animals who come in with clients that get fed all kinds of stuff, from strictly only turkey bologna to raw lamb ground with lots of scoops of this and that vitamin/minerals to raw chicken necks to Big Red Chunks. Some animals look better than others, and some animals getting what I'd consider premium feeds have diseases right next to the ones who eat "crap", and believe me, vice-versa ("crap"eaters who live to be 16 or better).

What research do you do? I'm serious. I'd do whatever I thought best for my animals based on:
a) thriftiness (how they look and perform)
b)cost (very real to me)
c) convenience (ease and continuity of preparation and aquisition, also considering this for travelling).

It's tough to feel like someone might consider your choice of diet to be pracically abusive if it works for you and your animals, yet I still look for the better thing if I can do it.

Rebecca,
Would you mind sending me more info about the guy in SC that provides whole critters for raw feeders? My email is lisa_rayburn at hotmail if you didn't mind.

PowderPuff,
I'm switching my dogs to raw because Ben doesn't do well on most kibbles and both dogs were getting tartar on their teeth. I don't want my dogs to be anesthetized just for teeth cleaning and would like them to have fresher breath.

Ben was eating Purina One Sensitive Stomach and doing okay but not great on it so I'm hoping to see an improvement with the raw. I think he has some food allergies or "sensitivities". If your dog is doing well on the kibble it is on - that's fine. If you have a problem - skin allergies, tooth and breath issues, chronic or degenerative diseases - raw might help and it can't hurt to try.

If you decide to switch your dog, go ahead and do it. Just feed her in her crate or in a separate room from the other dog - the benefits will be worth the slight inconvenience.

I'm currently feeding raw to two dogs in a one-room efficiency with a dorm-room refrigerator, two cats and a house rabbit. So it can be done - it's not much more difficult than kibble and it's a lot more fun for all of us.
Lisa

Yes, planning on being there...we have to go up Friday and set the course, make sure PortaPotties are in place and be ready to roll at 7am sharp-lots of dogs to run, and the meeting to boot.
Rip IS "the Man"! Always will be to me anyway.
We carried selegiline instead of Anipryl due to costs...it's hard to get clients sold on a drug for this kind of thing if they can't/won't afford it.
Nice to share oldster moments with you. I get misty-eyed everytime I see Eve rolling around on her back in the grass because she looks just like her old boy. She doesn't like the hugs though, it's a shame, she gets 'em anyway. I used her at a Fun Day demo at the childrens farm here in town in the spring (it was a Mother's day thing), and put her on sheep. She did her thing wonderfully, but wouldn't come off them...I doubt she could hear me "EVE!!! THAT will DO!", but she did that when she was 5 too. Fun.
See you next weekend!

ok,
how much money are we talking about spending on buying raw. Could anybody give me a monthly estimate? Am I way off base in assuming that it is completely out of my budget right now. And if it isnt expensive, where are you getting it so cheaply?

I can answer that based on a discussion for treatment for my seizure dog that I had with my holistic vet.

Feeding whold prey provides all the gizzards of the animals which is about is complete a B complex as dogs can get. Vitimin Bs are essential to neurological support which is often why dogs with brain chemistry problems benefit so much.

My last monthly figure was 75.00-80.00 for 4 dogs. I was going through 60 lbs of wellness before that which was 37.00 for 30 lbs so for me it works out about the same as long as I keep my spending to under .99/lb. I buy pork hocks, chicken is always on sale here, Pork necks, The parts humans don't eat with regularity unless you cook sole food or strange indian dishes pretty much go for cheap. I just got whole chickens for $.89/lb which is very doable for me.

Clean teeth has been mentioned a couple times as a benefit of raw. Just wanted to mention that knuckle bones will do the same thing. I've never taken my kibble-fed dogs in for a teeth cleaning and never would put them under than unnecessary anesthesia just for scraping tartar.

As far as the cost of kibble, a good co-op will help there. I pay much less than $1 a pound for a top quality kibble (Timberwolf).

I think the USDA website is really crucial for anyone looking to make up their dogs' diet at home, whether cooked or raw. It behooves you as a dog owner to know exactly what nutrients your dog is getting. I did some experimenting with a raw diet (my dogs are now eating kibble and may go back to having raw some days in the future), got really geeky about it and made up a spreadsheet so I could analyze the nutritional content of what they were eating according to the NRC standards (because I think when science is available, we should use it). What the spreadsheet showed me is how very very easy it is to either seriously underfeed or omit altogether important vitamins and minerals (not to mention feed amounts of fat that are orders of magnitude higher than a dog should probably be getting), especially if you follow the kind of offhand recommendations people often give. It's very difficult to hit all the bases with the sorts of ingredients that are most available (chicken carcasses, random beef organs and bones, etc.) unless you also add a vitamin supplement and if you do that, you also need to plug that into the values you're feeding, otherwise you could be oversupplementing.

I'm not saying it's rocket science, but that it's something that deserves attention. Just rotating the meats you feed won't cut it.

There's a research paper out there called "NUTRIENT COMPOSITION OF WHOLE VERTEBRATE PREY (EXCLUDING FISH) FED IN ZOOS" (I can't remember where it came from, but it's available in pdf and online, so a search on the title should dig it up) that demonstrates that feeding whole prey does (unsurprisingly) meet nutritional requirements for dogs. But very few raw feeders actually feed whole prey. You can't really reconstruct the animal just by throwing in some tripe or pulped veggies along with the meaty bones. The only place I know of to get whole raw ungulates (other than if you grow them yourself) is Hare Today, which sells ground young steer, goat, rabbit, and other mixes that are essentially the entire animal sans hair ground up and packaged in plastic tubs. I feed this stuff to my dogs when I can get it, but it ain't cheap.

By the way, I did an extended raw feeding experiment with Solo and saw no difference whatsoever in his condition, behavior, or necessity for behavioral meds. This may be because Solo's neurotransmitter issues aren't simple enough to be fixed by diet, and also because he is a healthy dog in great condition to begin with. Solo has also always had very clean teeth -- all of my dogs do -- I don't know why, I guess they're just lucky. I have fed raw in the past, I have fed an eclectic diet (sometimes raw, sometimes cooked, sometimes kibble), but most of the time my dogs have been eating kibble.

My anecdotal evidence tells me that kibble is great for dogs. My dogs couldn't look healthier (granted, they are eating a very good kibble -- Solid Gold Mmillennia) and I have to admit it does get my back up a bit when people get all evangelical about raw feeding and suggest that I am not doing what's good for my dogs. Look, I'm not dumb. I know what's working for my dogs, and I don't need to wake up and smell any coffee. Raw food isn't a magic bullet, it can be done well, it can be done badly. People who suggest that "any raw diet" is better than kibble are deluding themselves. Personally, I'm not going to make raw a larger part of my dogs' diets until I'm in a position to feed them a diet that I am satisfied will give them all the nutrients they need. If I started randomly throwing animal body parts to them just because those body parts are fresh, it wouldn't be an improvement on their current diet and in that case, what would be the point?

Excuse me while I go abuse my dogs by feeding them some dry crunchy brunch, thanks.

Don't forget Ben is only nine and a half, so as I said I'd expect he will go back on selegiline at some point (God willing and he lives that long). However, that may not be true either, who knows.

Anyway, let's see, the rabbit guy (and I think he has other things, like guineas and such in season). I got the info from the carnivore-suppliers list on yahoo. I can't surf there on this machine but if you sign on I think there's an archive. He's a regular.

Rabbits aren't cheap, but I can vary with chickens, which surely here in the chicken capital of the world I should be able to find. Since I was feeding Ben over $100 in meds/supplements a month, I think I can take that money and give him two chickens and a rabbit every week, plus other meats, and have some left over.

I'm looking at the USDA site, and it looks like a great tool. Does anyone know of where I could find a "daily requirments" list of vitamins and minerals for dogs?

Here is another question on the subject. What do you feel about home cooked diets? I'm kinda thinking that it would be the next step up from kibble - if for no other reason than it is fresh and minimally processed.

yeah roxy teeth have tartar build up on them already and shes only 18 months!! Ive tried brushing her teeth regularly doesnt help, and buying those dentastix things and they dont help, so that is one of the reasons why i want to switch to raw and also i thing her engergy levels could improve

yeah roxy teeth have tartar build up on them already and shes only 18 months!! Ive tried brushing her teeth regularly doesnt help, and buying those dentastix things and they dont help, so that is one of the reasons why i want to switch to raw and also i thing her engergy levels could improve

What's wrong with Roxy's energy levels? If she's lacking in energy, and has been checked out medically, you could try increasing the protein level of her current food to see if that helps. Realize that some BC's are more laid back than others though.

Can you get hard bones, like knuckle bones? The dentasticks and similar products are just a marketing scheme, I've never seen them really work that well.

What other kibbles do you have available in your area? Perhaps it would be worth simply trying a different brand?

No offense, but switching to raw just because of tartar buildup and energy level is like getting a facelift because you have a pimple. I don't mean to pick on you PowderPuff, but I hear it all too often and then hear the horror stories of what went wrong. Save the extremeness for when it's really needed. JMO, of course.

If a dog is not doing well on kibble then switching to raw may be the answer.

Switching because of tartar buildup will not necessarily solve the problem. Having harder bones to chew could help. Changing the kind of chews could help.

I have also seen where folks say it is cheaper to feed raw. That is not true either. I can feed my dogs (3) for $30-40 a month. Above it shows that someone with 4 dogs spends twice that. If you are raising the animals yourself that may be different.

Plus you have to account for the time involved and the storage of the food.

If I felt one of my dogs would greatly benefit I would try it but for now, my dogs are doing great on kibble.

I don't usually get into these raw discussions but I have a couple of things I want to say.

First, I've been feeding raw for over three years. It took me a while to get to the point where I felt totally comfortable with it so it's only been the last two years I've feed primarily raw. Occasionally I feed Innova EVO (a high quality grainless kibble) when the situation demands it but I'd estimate that as less than three or four times a month. Mostly, I feed cull ewes from my flock and add in some other kinds of meat for variety.

In my opinion, after much study and thought, the only type of raw feeding that makes sense is the whole prey model. It's simply the way dogs are meant to eat. If you stick as close to that as possible, and feed variety, the diet will be balanced and optimal for a dog.

Optimal diet for a dog, like optimal diet for people, means the body will not be stressed by having to compensate for less than optimal. And just like with people, some can handle the extra stress on the body and will still do fine on less than optimal, some won't.

The difference in my dogs on kibble (even high quality kibble) vs whole prey model raw the way I'm feeding it is to me striking. Physically, they look better, have more stamina and move better. Mentally, they seem sharper. Something I *think* I notice but wouldn't say is striking, is that they seem calmer. Although I see what I consider a big difference in all of my dogs, I see less dramatic differences in the younger ones. I think the younger, healthy dog is more capable of "buffering" the less than optimal kibble diet than the older or otherwise impaired dogs.